LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

darling, I am so sick of pumpkin preserves! Never, never let us have pumpkin preserves in our house of dreams.

      “Almost everywhere I’ve gone for the last month I’ve had P. P. for supper. The first time I had it I loved it … it was so golden that I felt I was eating preserved sunshine … and I incautiously raved about it. It got bruited about that I was very fond of P. P. and people had it on purpose for me. Last night I was going to Mr. Hamilton’s and Rebecca Dew assured me that I wouldn’t have to eat P. P. there because none of the Hamiltons liked it. But when we sat down to supper, there on the sideboard was the inevitable cut-glass bowl full of P. P.

      “‘I hadn’t any punkin preserves of my own,’ said Mrs. Hamilton, ladling me out a generous dishful, ‘but I heard you was terrible partial to it, so when I was to my cousin’s in Lowvale last Sunday I sez to her, “I’m having Miss Shirley to supper this week and she’s terrible partial to punkin preserves. I wish you’d lend me a jar for her.” So she did and here it is and you can take home what’s left.’

      “You should have seen Rebecca Dew’s face when I arrived home from the Hamiltons’ bearing a glass jar two-thirds full of P. P.! Nobody likes it here so we buried it darkly at dead of night in the garden.

      “‘You won’t put this in a story, will you?’ she asked anxiously. Ever since Rebecca Dew discovered that I do an occasional bit of fiction for the magazines she has lived in the fear … or hope, I don’t know which … that I’ll put everything that happens at Windy Poplars into a story. She wants me to ‘write up the Pringles and blister them.’ But alas, it’s the Pringles that are doing the blistering and between them and my work in school I have scant time for writing fiction.

      “There are only withered leaves and frosted stems in the garden now. Rebecca Dew has done the standard roses up in straw and potato bags, and in the twilight they look exactly like a group of humped-back old men leaning on staffs.

      “I got a postcard from Davy today with ten kisses crossed on it and a letter from Priscilla written on some paper that ‘a friend of hers in Japan’ sent her … silky thin paper with dim cherry blossoms on it like ghosts. I’m beginning to have my suspicions about that friend of hers. But your big fat letter was the purple gift the day gave me. I read it four times over to get every bit of its savor … like a dog polishing off a plate! That certainly isn’t a romantic simile, but it’s the one that just popped into my head. Still, letters, even the nicest, aren’t satisfactory. I want to see you. I’m glad it’s only five weeks to Christmas holidays.”

Chapter V

       Table of Contents

      Anne, sitting at her tower window one late November evening, with her pen at her lip and dreams in her eyes, looked out on a twilight world and suddenly thought she would like a walk to the old graveyard. She had never visited it yet, preferring the birch and maple grove or the harbor road for her evening rambles. But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods … for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them. So Anne betook herself to the graveyard instead. She was feeling for the time so dispirited and hopeless that she thought a graveyard would be a comparatively cheerful place. Besides, it was full of Pringles, so Rebecca Dew said. They had buried there for generations, keeping it up in preference to the new graveyard until “no more of them could be squeezed in.” Anne felt that it would be positively encouraging to see how many Pringles were where they couldn’t annoy anybody any more.

      In regard to the Pringles Anne felt that she was at the end of her tether. More and more the whole situation was coming to seem like a nightmare. The subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect which Jen Pringle had organized had at last come to a head. One day, a week previously, she had asked the Seniors to write a composition on “The Most Important Happenings of the Week.” Jen Pringle had written a brilliant one … the little imp was clever … and had inserted in it a sly insult to her teacher … one so pointed that it was impossible to ignore it. Anne had sent her home, telling her that she would have to apologize before she would be allowed to come back. The fat was fairly in the fire. It was open warfare now between her and the Pringles. And poor Anne had no doubt on whose banner victory would perch. The school board would back the Pringles up and she would be given her choice between letting Jen come back or being asked to resign.

      She felt very bitter. She had done her best and she knew she could have succeeded if she had had even a fighting chance.

      “It’s not my fault,” she thought miserably. “Who could succeed against such a phalanx and such tactics?”

      But to go home to Green Gables defeated! To endure Mrs. Lynde’s indignation and the Pyes’ exultation! Even the sympathy of friends would be an anguish. And with her Summerside failure bruited abroad she would never be able to get another school.

      But at least they had not got the better of her in the matter of the play. Anne laughed a little wickedly and her eyes filled with mischievous delight over the memory.

      She had organized a High School Dramatic Club and directed it in a little play hurriedly gotten up to provide some funds for one of her pet schemes … buying some good engravings for the rooms. She had made herself ask Katherine Brooke to help her because Katherine always seemed so left out of everything. She could not help regretting it many times, for Katherine was even more brusk and sarcastic than usual. She seldom let a practice pass without some corrosive remark and she overworked her eyebrows. Worse still, it was Katherine who had insisted on having Jen Pringle take the part of Mary Queen of Scots.

      “There’s no one else in the school who can play it,” she said impatiently. “No one who has the necessary personality.”

      Anne was not so sure of this. She rather thought that Sophy Sinclair, who was tall and had hazel eyes and rich chestnut hair, would make a far better Queen Mary than Jen. But Sophy was not even a member of the club and had never taken part in a play.

      “We don’t want absolute greenhorns in this. I’m not going to be associated with anything that is not successful,” Katherine had said disagreeably, and Anne had yielded. She could not deny that Jen was very good in the part. She had a natural flair for acting and she apparently threw herself into it wholeheartedly. They practiced four evenings a week and on the surface things went along very smoothly. Jen seemed to be so interested in her part that she behaved herself as far as the play was concerned. Anne did not meddle with her but left her to Katherine’s coaching. Once or twice, though, she surprised a certain look of sly triumph on Jen’s face that puzzled her. She could not guess just what it meant.

      One afternoon, soon after the practices had begun, Anne found Sophy Sinclair in tears in a corner of the girls’ coatroom. At first she had blinked her hazel eyes vigorously and denied it … then broke down.

      “I did so want to be in the play … to be Queen Mary,” she sobbed. “I’ve never had a chance … father wouldn’t let me join the club because there are dues to pay and every cent counts so much. And of course I haven’t had any experience. I’ve always loved Queen Mary … her very name just thrills me to my finger tips. I don’t believe … I never will believe she had anything to do with murdering Darnley. It would have been wonderful to fancy I was she for a little while!”

      Afterwards Anne concluded that it was her guardian angel who prompted her reply.

      “I’ll write the part out for you, Sophy, and coach you in it. It will be good training for you. And, as we plan to give the play in other places if it goes well here, it will be just as well to have an understudy in case Jen shouldn’t always be able to go. But we’ll say nothing about it to any one.”

      Sophy had the part memorized by the next day. She went home to Windy Poplars with Anne every afternoon when school came out and rehearsed it in the tower. They had a lot of fun together, for Sophy was full of quiet vivacity.

Скачать книгу